Sunday, January 28, 2018

The biggest wildfire season in
Florida for headline-inducing drama was the 1998 season, when the whole state
almost burned down, and we had every other disaster except volcanoes and
locusts. The Bugaboo fire didn’t hit the headlines like the others but was
personally the most dramatic fire that I ever worked from the State EOC.

Florida Division of Forestry firefighters working a wildfire in Florida in 1998.

The Bugaboo fire reached out and
touched me at about 9 PM the evening of May 10, 2007. I was sipping on a Scotch
at the bar of the American Legion in Tallahassee when the state issued cell
phone on my hip started ringing. We had just finished the monthly members
meeting and I was having a drink with my friends before heading home.

I put the phone to my ear and gave
my standard greeting. “Mike Whitehead.”

I recognized the voice on the other
end of the phone as Amy Godsey, the State Meteorologist. The background noise
indicated that she was calling from the State Emergency Operations Center.

“Dave Halstead wants you to come to
the State EOC,” Amy said. Dave Halstead was the State Emergency Response Team
Chief, or the man who ran the EOC during a disaster.

“What’s going on?”

“The Bugaboo fire is blowing up.”

“OK,” I said. “Tell him I’ll be there
in about 20 minutes.”

The Bugaboo fire was born on
Bugaboo Island, deep in the Okefenokee Swamp in southern Georgia. The fire
crept south, following the National Forest, and moved into Florida. Much of
what I knew about wildfires and the combating of such conflagrations I had
learned from Jim Karels. Jim worked for the Division of Forestry in the Florida
Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and by 2007 had risen to be
Director of the Division. Later on Jim became the Team Lead of the Yarnell Hill
Fire Serious Accident Investigation. The Yarnell Hill Fire was a wildfire near
Yarnell, Arizona, ignited by lightning on June 28, 2013. On June 30, it overran
and killed 19 City of Prescott firefighters, members of the Granite Mountain
Hotshots.

In one of many conversations that I
had with Jim he explained the arcane art and science of “fire behavior.” And how there was a difference between fighting
wildfires in the Western United States and in Florida. The pine trees and scrub
palmetto in the Florida forests, he explained, provided considerably more fuel
per acre than the grasslands out West.

I parked my car in front of the
Sadowski Building, swiped my badge at the reader, heard the audible click and
then entered the State EOC through the door under the archway connecting the
two buildings. On the drive over I wondered why, for the first time in my
career, I’d been summoned to the State EOC to work a wildfire at night. I’d
worked fires during the day. And I’m not an expert on fire behavior but seem to
remember Jim telling me that, at least in Florida, the wildfires would rage
during the day but “lie down” at night.

I’d also been known to say, if not
in presentations then in private conversations, that we didn’t do mass care at
night. And I mean by “we” I mean those of us working mass care from the State
EOC. Obviously, the Red Cross worked shelters and multi-family fires at night
but there wasn’t a lot of mass care coordination that happened at night. People
went to bed, got up the next morning and worked out the problems.

And another thing: at the State EOC
we never did anything that had to do with mass care immediately. Most of the
time when somebody wanted something (a truck of water or ice) that was sitting
on hand at the Logistics Staging Area then we would enter the request and they
got it the next day. If we didn’t have it already we had to get it from FEMA
or, as a last resort, try and get the State to buy it. In any event, that would
take days to make the request and then more days to get the product trucked in
and delivered to whoever needed it. And whoever needed it would be most unhappy, because when they made the request their expectation on delivery was in
minutes, not days.

The Big Room at the other end of
the building contained about 30 men and women in various stages of activity. Most
of the people I knew well. Jim Karels was there. Carla Boyce, who later went on
to work for FEMA was there. Roy Dunn, who had worked the 2004 and 2005
hurricane season with me, and who also went on to work for FEMA, was also
there.

A low-pressure system off
Jacksonville had intensified and generated a steady wind out of the northeast. That
meant that during the evening of May 10 the fire didn’t “lie down.” The wind from
the low-pressure system disrupted this pattern, stoking the fire with oxygen
and driving it toward the southwest. As I walked into the room several people
verbally transmitted the situation to me.

“… there’s a wall of fire twenty
miles wide and 200 feet high heading for Lake City…”

“… all the fire fighters can do in
this situation is get out of the way…”

“… the State Fire Marshall is
rounding up all structural fire fighters they can and sending them to the North
edge of the city to make a last stand…”

I can’t remember if it was Dave Halstead, or Amy Godsey, or Carla Boyce, or Roy Dunn, who told me the
reason that I had been summoned to the State EOC at 9 AM on a Thursday night:
“We think that we’re going to have to evacuate Lake City. We need you to open
up some shelters.”

A picture of me briefing the State EOC in 2006. Dave Halstead (r) is walking behind me.

Lake City is the Seat for Colombia
County and sits astride the intersection of Interstates 75 & 10 about an
hour West of Jacksonville. I had visited the county and city many times, mostly
gazing at the scenery through a car window on trips from Tallahassee to
Gainesville, Winter Park or Jacksonville. Sometimes we would stop there for a
rest break or to grab a sandwich.

Now they were telling me that they
were afraid that Lake City was going to burn down. And they wanted me to help
them do something about it.

I had now been the State Mass Care
Coordinator for over 7 years. As I liked to say in presentations, I had worked
8 hurricanes in 16 months and 4 in six weeks, and I’d have to be pretty damn
stupid not to figure out what I was supposed to be doing by the 3rd
or 4th hurricane.

But did they just say that Lake
City is going to burn down? Lake City?

I have a vivid memory of this
moment. I was standing in the middle of the EOC. They hadn’t even let me get to
my workstation. As I was digesting this message I looked up and saw 6 or 8
people in a semi-circle around me, all with an air of expectation.

I realized that they’ve been
waiting for me to arrive and solve this problem. And their expectations were
not of days, or hours or even minutes, but right then. Lake City was fixing to
burn down, and Mike Whitehead needed to deliver a shelter plan for the
inhabitants. Immediately.

My problem was that not only did I
not have a plan, I had never envisioned the possibility of this event ever
occurring.

I needed a map. The EOC had large
(8 feet tall by 6 feet wide) maps positioned on the walls so that one was
always nearby. I walked over to the nearest map, my entourage following me. In
2004, during the response to Hurricane Ivan, a picture flashed up on one of the
5 giant screens in the EOC showing that a portion of the Interstate 10 bridge
had dropped into Pensacola Bay, and I had walked over to the same map,
wondering how we were going to get supplies into Pensacola.

Someone asked me, ”Should we call
the Red Cross?”

“No,” I replied immediately. “We’re
the State. We can’t call the Red Cross to open a shelter. A County has to call
them and request them to open a shelter.”

I stared at the map. Which County?
I followed Interstate 75 on the map south from Lake City to the next big city:
Gainesville. Alachua County.

I turned to Roy Dunn, standing
beside me. “Call Alachua County and ask them to open up a shelter.”

Then I called Karen Hagan, our Red
Cross State Liaison, told her what was happening, and asked her to come into
the EOC.

The Red Cross got the shelter open.
The State Fire Marshall staged every available structural firefighter they
could contact on the north side of Lake City. And about 1 AM we got word in the
State EOC that the wind had stopped, and the Bugaboo fire had decided to go to
bed after all. And so did we.

About Me

Nationally recognized expert in coordinating mass care at the state level and author of two books on the Iraq war. My principal professional objective is to improve the national capability in Mass Care Services so that the nation can be ready to respond to a catastrophic mass care event in the nation.
Visit my website at www.thelionofbabylon.com